Finding Hope In The Genealogy of Jesus | Matthew 1:1-17 Pastor Neil McClendon

So let me point to this essential doctrine this morning and let's just think just for a little bit, okay?

Because if you don't believe in the virgin birth, then you have an even bigger problem and then you have no solution for original sin.

You've backed yourself into a corner.

And to understand the virgin birth, you have to understand the doctrine of original sin.

What do you mean by original sin?

Original sin is the biblical teaching that sin is not just an act, but also a condition that has been handed down from Adam to all mankind.

Everyone born after Adam and Eve inherits is born in sin.

David, the man after God's own heart, says, I was conceived in sin.

I was born.

This is my condition.

It's not just something I do, it's not just my behavior, it's a condition of all of humanity.

This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit our website at grandparkway.org.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Lord, uh deep down we know.

Deep down, at a place we often don't have language for, we know.

We understand that you're gonna come again one day.

You've already come once and you're gonna come again.

And Advent is a great time to remind ourselves, God, that we live between the first and the second coming of Jesus.

We're not just here spinning on a big dirt ball, uh, disconnected from what God's doing.

For every person in this room who is a Christian, they're a part of the story that you're telling.

And we live between the first coming and the second coming.

And today we've gathered to remind ourselves that we don't just exist, we don't just pay the bills, we don't just pay down the credit cards, we can charge more stuff we don't need.

We're people of hope.

And that's a defiant act of rebellion in such a jaded, cynical culture, just full of doom scrolling and comparison.

We believe in a God that's gonna come one day, He's gonna heal every hurt.

There's people in this room right here, God, that are hurting.

You got a bad diagnosis, they're living with treatment.

Wonder if there's gonna be healing, and you're gonna right every wrong, so we don't have to be people of the payback and retaliation.

So, Holy Spirit, illuminate the scriptures today.

Remind us that there's hope to be found, there's hope to be believed, there's hope to be experienced, that hope is found in you, not in ourselves, it's in you.

And for that we're grateful.

So we say thank you in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen, amen.

You can have a seat.

If you have a Bible, I invite you to take it over to the book of Matthew.

We're preaching to the book of Matthew if you're if you're our guest.

And we started in chapter three because we saved the first two chapters for Advent, which begins today.

Advent is the four Sundays that lead up to Christmas, and each Sunday has a theme, and the theme of today is hope.

And so I want to talk to you about finding hope in the genealogy of Jesus.

That's right, the genealogy, the list of the genealogy, like the first part, first 17 verses of Matthew, if you start reading the New Testament, you would skip and start reading probably in verse 18 because it makes more sense.

But I'm gonna submit to you and suggest to you today and spend my time going crazy this morning uh over this list of uh of names, which is more than a list of names, it's really the bigness of God's uh plan to redeem the the world, it's kind of revealed through people.

Because here's one of the things I want you to understand God tells his story through people, and not all of them are perfect.

Matter of fact, some of them are deeply flawed people.

So if you're sitting here this morning and you're like, dude, I'm kind of I shaved and I put on a clean shirt, or as Chris Chris Roberson says, I put on my cleanest, dirty shirt, and this is the best I could do.

I got here because you have free coffee.

But but but let's don't kid ourselves.

I'm not the best person.

I'm just saying to you, check, check, check, check all those boxes, but also understand this you're just the kind of person that God works through.

And so don't excuse yourself from something that you were created for.

You say, well, you seem to be pretty excited about this.

What do you mean, finding hope in the genealogy of Jesus?

I want you to, I often say this that Christianity is historical before it's personal.

And I want you to understand some of the historicity of the Christian faith.

I just want to start reading uh the part that we typically skip.

Matthew chapter 1, verse 1.

Matthew 1:1

It says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zarah by Tamar.

And Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nashon, and Nashan the father of Solomon, and Solomon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruf, and Obad the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king, and David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asap, and Asap the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham and Joseph the father of Ahaz.

Is it coming?

Do you feel hope rising in you?

Are you just swelling up like, oh, I'm glad I shaved my legs for this?

I mean, this is this is it's like your call and roll at the homeschool classroom right here.

But wait, there's more hope coming.

The father of Ahaz and Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

And after the deportation to Babylon, uh Jechaniah was the father of Shiateel, and Shiateel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abuid, and Abuid the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azar the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Akim, and Akim the father of Elohid, and Elohid the father of Eliazar, and Eliazar the father of Matan, and Mathan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who's called the Christ.

So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ, 14 generations.

Now, if you're a thinking person, and most of you are, or if you're just a feeling person, you're thinking right now, I don't know what you're gonna get out of that.

And I'm here to tell you, you should find great, deep, abiding, life-altering, you inspiring hope in the words that we just read.

Matter of fact, they start off with 16 of the most consequential words ever recorded under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

And you're like, okay, you keep saying that, but you're gonna have to show me how.

How can I find hope in the genealogy of Jesus?

Well, four reasons.

Number one is this, because God is telling a big story.

God is telling a big story.

The genealogy of Jesus is not just a list, it's a glimpse at the enormity of God's salvation plan revealed through all the generations and all of God's dealings with people, okay?

And so I just want to summarize some of the major turning points in this plan.

It really starts about a week into creation.

Uh, God creates everything on, you know, on the first day, in the second day, and the third day, and then he rests, okay?

And about a week into this process, humanity is in the garden, Adam and Eve are in the garden, and God has said, You are free.

By the way, you are created to be free.

Christianity should resonate with freedom out of every pore of your being.

You should be the freest cat in the room.

People should watch you eat and kind of go, there's something about that guy.

He enjoys mashed potatoes more than anybody I know.

And it's not about gluttony, it's just about, oh my gosh, I should be burning in hell, but I get to eat mashed potatoes.

Are you serious?

I mean, everything just redounds to the glory of God for people that are really free.

But they they they they didn't believe.

They thought, oh, God's holding out on you.

That the Satan comes along in the form of a serpent in the Garden of Eden and says to Adam and Eve, Hey, hey, God's afraid you're gonna be like him, knowing good, knowing right and wrong.

You shouldn't have to submit to somebody else's idea of right and wrong.

You you're your own people.

And they said, you know what, you're right.

God might be holding out on us.

God's afraid that we could be God one day, and we still believe that lie.

And so, not even a I mean, barely a week into creation, horrible thing happens.

And the Bible says that sin entered into the world.

It was terrible.

God created perfection, live forever, and they screwed it up because they didn't believe God, and they believed the lie.

And yet, in the midst of this darkness, there's this glimmer of hope when God is dealing out consequences.

Because hear me, beloved, there has always been and there will always be a consequence for sin.

That's just the way God established the world to be.

But even in the midst of that, there's a glimmer of hope.

Genesis chapter 3, verse 15 says it like this.

Genesis 3:15

God says, uh, he's talking to the serpent.

He says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

She, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

This is known, big word, as a proto-evangelium.

What?

The first gospel.

It announces the promise of a coming Savior, who, by the way, will be born of a woman.

Your offspring.

And God's kind of winking at us and telling us way back in Genesis, hey, I know it's bad.

You got expelled out of what you were created for, but I got a plan to bring you back in.

And then about 2100 BC, God makes a promise to a man named Abraham that I'm gonna make you the father of many nations.

Abraham is so old he doesn't even think about sex anymore.

And he tells his wife, hey, by the way, God says we're gonna have a lot of offspring, and she laughs out loud.

Some of you are like, My wife has the same response when I bring up that topic.

And she's just like, Are you kidding me?

Okay, it's so I mean, so the focus is now on Abraham, but nothing happens.

And it takes, and here's why.

I mean, he goes through all this stuff, and nothing happens.

They're like, okay, Abraham's gonna be the guy.

It takes a long time to tell a story this big.

Some of you are like, you know, I thought I'd be married by now, I thought I would have met her by now.

I mean, I'm I I'm just I mean, what's God doing?

He's not done telling the story.

And you should read this list of names of people, they're not just names, they're indicators.

They're people are like, oh, dude, hello.

I thought, I mean, I was like waiting forever.

And so the focus is on Abraham.

Nothing happens.

And Abraham's grandson, Jacob, is on his deathbed, and he calls one of his sons to his side and he prophesies over him.

This son, he's named Judah.

And he says this to him he says, Hey, by the way, uh, you God's gonna bring the blessing to the nations through a king, kingly ruler.

And this ruler is gonna receive tribute and obedience from the peoples of the earth.

Who talks like that?

From you is gonna come this kingly ruler, and he's like, Oh, okay, thanks.

I think it's kind of different, kind of weird.

And then a thousand BC, I mean a thousand years later, okay, BC, before Christ, we see this prophecy find fulfillment in the in a descendant of Judah by the name of David.

And David, now now people are thinking, is David the one who's gonna crush the serpent and and and bring it all into fruition?

I mean, come on, my money's on David.

He's this incredible guy, he kills a giant, all this great stuff happens.

And then David kind of makes some bad choices.

And the people of God make some bad choices, and then God raises up these two nations called Assyria and Babylon, he takes people into captive and they return from captivity, and they're not happy that it's taken so long because they fail to realize, like we do that.

Hey, you can't live in sin and experience God's plan for your life.

News flash.

So if you're living in sin today, you you got you can't get it, you can't cop an attitude towards God, like, I can't believe my life's not any better.

Your life's about as good as you can make it, and it's one of the consequences of sin is that God gives people over to what they really want to do because they keep doing it.

And so these people, I mean, they're they got some moxy.

They're kind of like, hey, and so in Psalm 89, verse 49, they say this back to God.

Psalms 89:49

Can you imagine talking to God this way?

Lord, where is this, your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?

Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.

God, they're they're clowning on us, God, because we're we're looking forward to this Messiah who is to come.

How long, O Lord?

Are you serious?

I'm starting to feel a bit foolish here.

Then you fast forward to 400 years before Christ.

The Old Testament ends and the messianic promise is unfulfilled.

They're still looking forward to something that they're starting to lose hope is gonna happen.

Spirits are down.

The Old Testament closes on a somber note.

If you read the guys at the end of the Old Testament, Malachi, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, it's they're not in a good mood.

It's like, dude, God's like ticked at the world.

No, people don't listen, so God says, I don't feel a need to talk.

That's when there's 400 years of silence that takes place between the close of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament.

This is where the historicity comes in.

Because if you don't understand that, then this when the silence is shattered by these 16 words of Matthew chapter 1, verse 1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Matthew 1:1

I mean, these people lose their mind.

And the reason they lose their mind is because they understood the historicity of the Christian faith, and we don't.

You say, Well, what do you mean?

What's the big deal?

Well, they had read and they had memorized Genesis chapter 2, verse 4, which is just another telling of the creation narrative.

Genesis 2:4

It sounds like this these are the generations, the genealogy basically.

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

Translation, this is the genealogy of creation back in Genesis 2.

And now here in Matthew 1, these people read this and it's like, oh, no one has to say anything because God is now speaking so loudly, their chest, their sternum is starting to reverberate, and they're like, Oh my gosh, could it be?

Because here in Matthew 1, the genealogy of a new creation God's bringing about.

And by using this phrase, Matthew kind of winks at him and he says, Hey, Jesus is the climax of God's story and the beginning of a new creation.

Not only is God telling a big story, but I would just submit and say to you this morning that your story only makes sense in the context and the confines of God's story.

Your story only makes sense in the confines and in the context of God's story.

This is why the Apostle Paul, the guy in the New Testament, he said, and God appeared to him as one untimely born.

I was out of sync.

I was my life was not in sync with the times and the timing of what God was doing.

And I had everything, and I laid in bed at night and I had this gnawing sense that something was missing.

And it wasn't something, it was somebody.

And some of you in this room this morning, you relate to that.

You relate because you don't understand what it means to be a Christian, is not just to have your sins forgiven, but it's for your life to have purpose.

You're now part of something that's been taking place for over 2,000 years and it's gonna continue forever.

Let me ask you just a practical question.

Does your life, do you ever feel the bigness?

My life is connected to something bigger and better and beyond me.

And so I can have incredible days where it's just like, whoa, or I can have really horrible days where I just feel like the world is stacked against me.

Could could uh if I'm if I would have known this marriage was gonna be like this, like this Yehu was gonna be this lazy, this unspiritual, this not inspiring, I would have never married this person.

But you did.

And you're gonna have days where it's just like, ah, I met a couple this morning, they're engaged, they're getting married in May.

I looked at the guy and said, Yeah, and within six months, she'll have you lift to the lid drinking skim milk.

All the married guys, she'll say, Hey, I want us to eat healthy, which his wife talked for.

You're kind of fat.

And this 20-something guy is just sitting there, you're like, I can't wait to get married.

It's awesome.

I'm not complaining.

I highly recommend it.

Been married 32 years.

But there are days I look at her and I just think, there's no way you could get those thoughts from what I said.

And I'm not responsible for your crazy thoughts, lady.

But you don't say that, my man.

You keep that to yourself.

You say, Yeah, I understand.

Your clothes don't feel right.

Clothes have a feeling.

Those are married men laughing.

Men that have been married a long time, who learn just to shut their mouth and go, this is psychotic.

And here's why you don't spit the bit and quit.

Because deep inside you have this hope.

It's kind of like this is gonna get better.

I mean, I said this guy asked me this just last week.

Hey, uh, how long you've been married?

32 years.

And he goes, Man, that's a long time.

You say it like it's a death sentence.

It gets easier.

Yes, it does.

You gotta hang in there.

I mean, if right now, if it's hard, you just gotta look at each other and go, man, sometimes I just fantasize about holding a pillow over your face.

Just starting over.

I mean, I was flipping channels last night and I come across 48 hours, and yet again, a man kills his wife.

And I was like, and then he got Google search the night before, the day before he kills his wife.

He did a Google search.

How hard do you have to hit somebody to make it render them unconscious?

And I'm like, man, you're not very smart, bro.

Get a burner phone.

No, I'm just kidding.

It's just like, man, so I'm sitting there on my couch watching this, and I'm just thinking, what happened to hope?

Look at me.

Hope is the first casualty of unbelief.

So if you don't feel very hopeful today, ask yourself what you don't believe that you probably should believe.

Then I would say and suggest God created you to believe.

Here's the second reason you should find hope in the genealogy of Jesus because God uses imperfect people as a part of his story.

He uses imperfect people as a part of his story.

You cannot outsend the promises of God.

Let me say this again.

You cannot outsend the promises of God.

So if you're committed to that, you're trying, you're like, hey, you don't know what I'm doing right now.

I don't have to, but God does.

And the promises of God are gonna go on long after you're done, okay?

And you'll either experience them and be blessed by them, or you'll you'll live with this deep sense of something's your your soul is kind of a half a half a bubble off.

Something's gnawing at you and not quite right, okay?

The whole time God's just kind of whispering saying, Hey, I use imperfect people as part of my story.

So listen, I I came from imperfection.

Some of you just ate Thanksgiving dinner with imperfection.

They're called your family.

And you could be more gracious and less gossipy and vindictive about these people.

You say, Well, what do you mean?

You can't outsend the promises of God.

Well, look, believe me, many of these people in this genealogy, this this list, they tried, okay?

And one thing that's unique about this list of people is there's actually women in included.

That was not something that they did in Judaism.

It was kind of like, hey, you guys stand in the background, it's a man's world.

They're like, oh no, God says, no, no, no, it's it this is for everybody.

Okay?

You say, what do you mean some women?

There's four women, and they all have kind of a sketchy moral background.

The first one is Tamar.

After her, you say, What do you mean it's sketchy moral background?

After her first two husbands died, she dressed as a prostitute to have children with her father-in-law.

Get you some of that.

Some of you are like, no.

Yeah, yeah.

She wanted to just ensure the family line continued.

Then there's Rahab, she was a Canaanite prostitute who protected the Israelite spies in Jericho because she had great faith in God.

Sometimes people who've lived wrong for a whole long time still have the capacity to do right.

Yeah.

Oh, and it goes on from there.

There's a Ruth, she was a Moabite, they were God's enemies.

She was known for her faithfulness to her mother-in-law.

Hello, ladies.

Some of you just killed you right there.

You're like all this other stuff I'm down with, but what?

She was faithful to her mother-in-law.

Yes.

Yes.

And God used that relationship.

It's this whole kinsman redeemer thing that we won't get into.

She later married a guy named Boaz.

Then they don't even mention this lady's name.

They call her the wife of Uriah.

Now, by the way, sketchy characters in the genealogy of Jesus are not just women.

Don't hear me say that.

This is the men are horribly worse, okay?

The wife of Uriah, this is really a story about David's sin.

Her name was Bathsheba.

King David was out on the roof.

During a time when the kings were off at war, David was like, I ain't got to go to war.

He's back chilling at his crib.

And he's up, and he looks over to the castle next door and he sees the woman on top of the roof taking a bath.

And he says to his servants, Go get her.

I want that woman for myself.

And they go get and bring her.

And he sleeps with her and gets her pregnant.

Her husband's off at war.

And so he commits adultery, gets this woman pregnant, and then has her husband killed to cover it up.

And then it gets better.

The Bible says of this guy, David, that he's a man after God's own heart.

Some of you men should relate to that.

Seriously, because deep inside of you, you really are a man after God's own heart, and you've done some horrible things.

But what you cannot do is say, Yeah, I've done horrible things, therefore I'm excluded.

No.

No.

You're invited.

You're invited.

And there's King Solomon who later in life Turned to idolatry and horrible sins that I wouldn't go into because it's hard to end well.

Let me just say, it's hard to end well.

Most people in America spend their entire working life getting ready to spend the last 20 years doing as little as possible, taking trips, playing golf, which I'm not against either one of those.

Take trips, play golf.

But if all you do is vacay for the last 20 years of your life, you have wasted a golden opportunity.

And then there's a guy named Manasseh.

He's one of those wicked kings in the Old Testament.

He practiced idol worship and he just killed innocent people because he could.

And then Jacob, he's just one last one.

Jacob.

Jacob was a deceitful schemer.

He deceived his blind, dying father just to get the blessing.

And he leveraged that to go off and make a lot of money in business.

And he has to go back and face his brother because his brother-in-laws were like, dude, get out of here.

You're making money that we could be making.

So his father-in-law says, Hey man, you gotta go.

My my sons are not, they're not cool with this.

So he has to go back and face his brother that he deceived 20 years earlier.

And he tries the same thing with God that he tries with everybody else.

It's a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus.

He divides his property.

He says, Hey, I've done the cost-benefit analysis, I've had my accountant drop the numbers, and I got two camps of people.

If he attacks over here, you guys will survive.

If he attacks over here, these people will survive.

See, this is why Christianity is historical long before it's personal.

You shouldn't just think, what's in it for me?

The Bible's not your high school yearbook.

Stop opening up and looking for your picture.

They have an index in the back of your high school yearbook next to your name, it has numbers, tells you every page your picture is on.

And we wonder how we're so conceited.

Your picture's not in here.

Every page is just a picture or reflection of this big, sufficient God who's been telling the story for a long, long, long time.

You say, well, why is it so important?

You're talking about all these flawed people.

Because by including flawed, sinful people, especially women who are not of Jewish descent, God was signaling that the Messiah comes for everyone, not just for the good people.

That's why in the book of Acts, which we preached through a year or so ago, he says the promise is for you and for those who are far off.

It's for you, you people that got church closed and went to church and you know all the answers.

And it's also for you who sit in this room today and go, I didn't know a word to any of those songs, and I kind of feel awkward being here.

We should have gone home after Thanksgiving, not stayed to go to church with our family.

I say to you, the promise is for you too.

Everything God says to the most moral person you know can be applied to you if you only believe.

Also, just reminds us that Jesus came for people with the past who don't feel like they have a future.

But also, get ready for this.

I think one of the reasons God includes these flawed, sinful people in the genealogy in which we should find some hope.

He's getting ready, he's getting the world ready for how he's gonna bring the Messiah through the womb of a virgin, an unmarried girl who's pregnant.

Dad, try to get your head around that.

Yes.

Here's the third reason you should find hope.

Because of the virgin birth, the perfection of Jesus is sufficient for your imperfection.

Because of the virgin birth, the perfection of Jesus is sufficient for your imperfection.

Let me just say this.

I don't want to get doctrinal.

I know it's been a hard week for some of you.

The Aggie's lost and and oh yeah, I don't hear you today.

Get you some of that.

Now, by the way, hey, here's the good news.

You're still gonna make the playoffs.

There you are.

Yeah.

You team not gonna make it, I'll tell you what.

Somebody said, How do you feel about that?

I said, I don't relegate my emotions to the performance of 18 to 22 year olds.

And this person walked away in their maroon shirt.

Anyway.

Yes, yes.

He said, Well, what do you mean?

Because the virgin birth, the perfection of Jesus is sufficient for your imperfection.

I know it's it's advent and it's candles and it's glowing and it's a lot of stuff, but let's just think a little bit, is all I'm saying.

I know the tryptophan from the turkey should have worn off by now, all right?

See, here's the thing: he couldn't come for us as our redeemer if he inherited a sinful nature by being born like everyone else.

This is why you see this cadence uh uh throughout this genealogy of Jesus, which sounds like this.

And this guy was the father of that guy, and Uzziah, the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah.

You're like, okay, I get it.

Father and a bunch of dudes' names.

And then you get down to verse 16, and it says, and Mathan, the father of Jacob.

And Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who was called Christ.

Notice that the Bible does not refer to Joseph as the father of Jesus because he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, which means he didn't inherit a sin nature like everyone else who had a father and a mother.

Now you may be thinking, no, wait a minute, you expect me to believe that a woman who never knew a man and she got pregnant?

Yeah, it's called the virgin birth.

And it's not something the church made up with, just to distinguish Jesus.

Hear this.

It's a promise God made thousands of years ago in Isaiah chapter 7, when he said to these people, hey, put me to the test.

Isaiah 7 · chapter mention

See if I don't do what I tell only I can do.

And then God says, Hey, ask for a sign.

And they're so religious, it's got in my head.

It's like, oh, I would never ask for a sign.

And God says, No, ask for a sign, please, come on.

He says, make it high as heaven, as deep as Sheol.

I don't care.

Oh, no, I would never do that.

And God says, okay, I'll give you a sign.

And then we read these words out of context, don't understand them.

The virgin birth is a sign from God that you can trust who God is and what he says.

Isaiah 7, verse 10 says it like this.

Isaiah 7:10

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, ask a sign of the Lord your God, let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.

But Ahaz said, I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test.

And he said, Hear then, O house of David, it is too little for you to weary men that you weary my God also.

Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel.

Because churches preach application and not doctrine.

Doctrine is slowly dying off.

And people who profess to be Christians don't believe some fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.

So let me point to this essential doctrine this morning, and let's just think just for a little bit, okay?

Because if you don't believe in the virgin birth, then you have an even bigger problem and that you have no solution for original sin.

You've backed yourself into a corner.

And to understand the virgin birth, you have to understand the doctrine of original sin.

What do you mean by original sin?

Original sin is the biblical teaching that sin is not just an act, but also a condition that has been handed down from Adam to all mankind.

Everyone born after Adam and Eve inherits, is born in sin.

David, the man after God's own heart, says, I was conceived in sin.

I was born, this is my condition.

It's not just something I do, it's not just my behavior, it's a condition of all of humanity.

The Bible says it like this in Romans 5:12, it says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Romans 5:12

Say, what?

Yes.

Yes.

Death came through sin.

We're created to live forever.

And because of sin, that's why when the Bible says the wages of sin is death, because you're not created to die.

So I had so many sarcastic people pop off, usually at a wedding, after the cocktail hour, and everyone's kind of lubricated on the inside.

Hey, doesn't the Bible say the wages of sin is death?

I sinned right before I came this way.

God didn't strike me dead.

And I'm just like, okay, moron, here you go.

You were created by God to live forever.

That's the way God set it up.

And because Adam and Eve distrusted God, now people die.

That people die is the ultimate evidence that sin is real and God means what he says.

Oh, so we don't sin every time we die.

We don't, I mean, and we don't die when we sin.

No.

You die as a result of sin.

See, when Adam sinned in the garden, his physical and spiritual nature was corrupted, his body was no longer eternal, and now he'd eventually die, and his soul is no longer spiritually alive but separated from God.

What does that mean?

That means that everybody who's been born since Adam was born.

Look at me, we're almost done.

You still with me?

Everyone who was born since Adam was born, separated from God.

So when people say, Well, we're all God's children, that is an oversimplified lie.

That you will be damned if you believe that.

Because you're not acknowledging your need of a savior.

See how consequential the doctrine of the virgin birth is?

The doctrine of the virgin birth, it's also a very hopeful truth.

You can hear this today because you can be forgiven because Jesus was born sinless, he lived sinless, and he died for the sinful.

Let me say that again.

Jesus was born sinless.

He didn't inherit a sinful nature like all of us did.

He lived sinless and he died for the sinful.

Okay, so if you're here today and you're like, hey man, does some things I'm not proud of.

There's hope for you.

Here's the last thing I would say.

You're gonna have hope, find hope in the genealogy of Jesus because God was at work then and he is now.

Look at verse 17, and we'll be done.

You still with me?

Say amen.

He says, so all the generations, and I love this.

What a summary statement.

So, all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations.

You realize how much happened from Abraham to David?

And then he says this.

And from David to the deportation of Babylon, 14 generations.

That means from David, where Israel said, Hey, we've got to have a king.

Everybody else has a king, we want a king.

We don't want to be ruled by God, we want to be ruled by a president who's gonna make America great again.

See, not much has changed.

We want to put our hope in a person, not in God.

And God sent them into deportation means they got taken captive and got deported to another country they didn't want to live in.

And then he says this.

And for the deportation to Babylon to Christ, 14 generations.

You say, I don't get it.

Just try to imagine all that transpired over all those generations, and you ever wonder how they made how they held on.

I mean, just I mean, come on.

You get taken to live somewhere you don't want to live.

It's like, oh my gosh, really?

Are you serious right now?

Yeah.

Yeah.

How did they hold on?

I think one of the one thing that allowed them to hold on, they didn't confuse their position with their experience.

They didn't confuse their then with their now.

What do you mean?

I want to just close by reading from Romans chapter 5 and we'll be done today.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

He says, Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Translation, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God that that's heaven.

We rejoice.

That's then, okay?

That's then.

We're excited about that.

And not only that, now, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

Get the order right, church.

Look at me.

Character produces hope.

Hope does not produce character.

Stop believing the lie of all the power of positive thinking and TV preachers.

Oh, if you just have hope and say the right things, you'll be a person of character.

No, you'll be a phony person, and when it gets hard, you'll spit the bit on God.

Character produces hope.

One of the reasons we're not hopeful is we haven't produced people of character.

Character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.

Why?

Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Ask yourself this question: Have you developed enough character to be a hopeful person?

We have a mental health crisis in our country because we think hope produces character.

And the Bible is very clear: character produces hope, and endurance produces character.

So when you go through something in this life, you're not being punished as much as you're being prepared.

This is why you should read this slog of names because it's not a list.

Look at me, and I'm done.

It's not a list, it's a reminder of the bigness of the story that God is telling.

And it's also a reminder that everyone of you in this room is invited for your life to be a part of that story.

So ask yourself do you ever feel, do you ever have this deep sense that I'm a part of something big?

And I'm gonna be okay.

I'm gonna have days where I'm crushing it, and then I'm gonna have days where I feel like I'm being crushed by it.

Okay?

I've been struck down but not destroyed.

Let's pray together.

If you're a guest, just relax.

We like to teach the Bible, and then we give you some space to think about it.

So questions come up on the screen.

But just right now, just ask yourself, hey God, what'd you say to me?

What had my name on it?

Where do I find hope in this thing?

That's a lot.

I talked about a lot today.

A lot of people, a lot of moving parts.

Yes.

God has been consistently changing the world for thousands of years.

And the story keeps being told, and it's gonna keep on being told.

And your life becomes a part of that.

Or you get up every day with this nonsense that it all depends on you.

So you better sell something today, you better close something today, you better meet the goal, or you could get laid off.

And I'll just submit to you that's no way to live.

And this hopeful story that God is telling reminds us that there's another place to put our hope in besides ourselves.

Let's think about that for just a moment.

Father, we understand today the sheer fact that Christ was born, He took on flesh, moved into the neighborhood, and rang our doorbell and said, Hey, I want to know you.

And I pray for people in this room that have never had that experience that today they would just they would just experience, they would feel, they would sense the God of the universe just ringing the doorbell and saying, Hey, I want to know you.

I live right next door.

I'm not far off.

I'm right here, real close.

I speak a language you understand.

And all that history you heard today is just a reminder that I'm telling a big story and I invite you to be a part of it.

God, we're humbled by that, and yet we're hopeful because of it.

Thank you for that hope that is ours in Christ because of Christ.

We pray in his name.

Amen.

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